The following background discussion includes information that may be useful in understanding the present invention. It is not an admission that any of the information provided herein is prior art or relevant to the presently claimed invention, or that any publication specifically or implicitly referenced is prior art.
Beauty care specialists, physicians, and others have long analyzed some physical features in order to identify items of attractiveness as well as to determine how to improve a person's attractiveness. Various articles present the results of such analysis. These include “Anatomy of ‘A Beautiful Face & Smile’,” by Patnaik, et al, J. Anat. Soc. India 52(1) 74-80 (2003); “Beauty Can be Explained by Proportions,” by Bass, John W., available at http://www.realself.com/article/beauty-explained-proportions; and “The Facial Proportions of Beautiful People,” available at http://majorityrights.com/weblog/comments//the_facial_proportions_of_beautiful_people.
Based on the various factors that have been thought to determine attractiveness over the years, many others have attempted to provide beauty analysis to users based on images. For example, US Patent Application Publication No. 2008/0004109 to Kanarat describes a gaming system that provides a celebrity match and facial attractiveness score based upon how similar that person's face is to a celebrity, and based on the size and position of facial features. US Patent Application Publication No. 2007/0047761 to Wasilunas analyzes facial symmetry, hair growth patterns and spatial data to provide beauty advice to a user.
Kanarat and Wasilunas, however, do not appear to focus on curvatures of a person's features, and instead look at the size and positions of features, a comparison of a user's face to celebrity faces, or facial symmetry, hair growth patterns and spatial data, which to the Applicant's knowledge, are not accurate indicators of beauty, in and of themselves.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,634,103 to Rubinstenn teaches using a 3-D facial image to provide beauty product suggestions to a user. However, Rubinstenn also fails to focus on curvature to provide accurate and individualized attractiveness scores or analysis.
One of the current inventor's own books, The Palmer Code (April 2009), describes manual methods of analyzing attractiveness of human faces, and calculating attractiveness scores. As disclosed in the prior art, however, The Palmer Code, also fails to analyze curvatures to determine attractiveness.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,194,093 to Perlman does use facial curvatures as part of an analysis, but that use is only with respect to determining facial movements rather than attractiveness.
The Anaface website, http://www.anaface.com/, claims to provide facial beauty analysis to users based upon photographs. There again, however, Anaface appears to base its “analysis” on facial symmetry and the length and width of certain features, without considering curvatures. (See e.g., http://greyviremia.livejournal.com/44780.html).
Thus, there is still a need for improved systems and methods that analyze facial or body curvatures in assessing attractiveness scores.
Unless the context dictates the contrary, all ranges set forth herein should be interpreted as being inclusive of their endpoints, and open-ended ranges should be interpreted to include commercially practical values. Similarly, all lists of values should be considered as inclusive of intermediate values unless the context indicates the contrary.